Take the Piano thud test! What's the highest frequency you properly hear?

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deafdude1

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The Basics of Musical Pitch

The above is a great test. Test it with your best HAs(left, right, both) with the volume dial or button turned to the max. It should work for those with CI as well, but you won't get to test for cochlear dead zones as it's a moot point. Your CI just bypasses the dead zones and stimulates the auditory nerve directly with electrical pulses. You can test if you can hear the high frequencies with CI. For those with HA, you need enough surviving hair cells to amplify. For those of you who are hearing or have a mild hearing loss, you can test unaided. For those of us who are deaf, we can't hear enough unaided to get a proper assessment of our cochlear dead regions.

Unaided, I can't properly hear anything but the lows. It's not loud enough even with the speaker cranked to the max. You will want to use a desktop speaker and turn it up to the max. If the speaker distorts terribly, turn it down a couple notches, but make sure it's loud enough for your HA to pick up the sound!

Try it with the speaker 3 feet away then hold the speaker near your HA. For me, the results were the same since my speaker is loud enough to reach my HA's SPL limit either way. Experment in different ways and obtain your best results. Make sure you properly adjust your speaker and try to test in a quiet room, turn off any other sources of noise.

This will both test what your HAs are capable of as well as your ears. It's also great for testing cochlear dead regions. The tone should be loud and clear like a bell and last the full 4 seconds. The pitch should ascend logically with each key(both white and black) sounding different. If you get the following, suspect a cochlear dead region(and possibly a poorly programmed HA)

1. The tone does not last the full 4 seconds, it fades away faster.
2. The tone is very faint or you just hear a thud or nothing.
3. The pitch sounds off or wrong or is the same across keys.
4. The tone sounds garbled, distorted or noiselike and not musical.

The highest I could hear at all for left ear: 967Hz then I hear just a thud.
The highest I could hear at all for right ear: 1046Hz then I hear just a thud.

The highest I could hear for both HA:
932Hz for the full 4 sec. At 967Hz it was heard for 3 sec. At 1046Hz it was heard for 2 sec. At 1108Hz and 1174Hz I heard it for just a second then silence. Above 1174Hz, I heard just a thud sound. I hear somewhat better with both HAs than with each alone.

I find it odd that I hear up to 932Hz loud and clear but it goes downhill fast from there. Below 932Hz sounds just a bit louder with each descending key. The volume drops off rapidly with each ascending key above 932Hz. Perhaps I don't have enough surviving hair cells at around 1000Hz and none a few dozen Hz above that. Ive always wondered how much of a HL before you get to that point. Perhaps no HA is powerful enough above 110-115db HL.

I will repost my audiogram:

125Hz: 60-65db HL
250Hz: 70-75db HL
375Hz: 80db HL(home test)
500Hz: 90db HL
625Hz: 100db HL(home test)
750Hz: 105-110db HL
875Hz: 110db HL(home test)
1000Hz: 110-115db HL
above 1000Hz: 115db-120db+ HL, possible cochlear dead region.

I will learn more about this from reading around and from your results and explanations. Feel free to leave a comment with your own results and ask questions.
 
No offense, but this is not an accurate determination of how well a person can hear with their hearing aids or how well their hearing aids address their hearing loss. I asked my CI audi about online tests and she said they aren't valid given the fact that they use different sound equipment and tones to produce the frequencies that are being tested. She also said that in a sound booth, the environment is controlled which gives a better idea of how well someone can hear and indicated that the sound quality/volume level of a computer speaker is much different from a speaker used in a sound booth.
 
Hear Again said:
No offense, but this is not an accurate determination of how well a person can hear with their hearing aids or how well their hearing aids address their hearing loss. I asked my CI audi about online tests and she said they aren't valid given the fact that they use different sound equipment and tones to produce the frequencies that are being tested. She also said that in a sound booth, the environment is controlled which gives a better idea of how well someone can hear and indicated that the sound quality/volume level of a computer speaker is much different from a speaker used in a sound booth.
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The above test is to see the highest frequency one can hear rather than DB hearing loss. Don't worry about what DB your speakers are outputting, just crank up the volume and determine the highest key(s) you are able to hear. I know that you need to use the TEN test to most accurately find out cochlear dead zones but most audiologists never even heard of the TEN test and those that do don't test for cochlear dead regions. The piano test gives an estimate that can be done at home. In addition, one can also find out the highest frequency they hear unaided, with HA and/or with CI.
 
Hear Again said:
No offense, but this is not an accurate determination of how well a person can hear with their hearing aids or how well their hearing aids address their hearing loss. I asked my CI audi about online tests and she said they aren't valid given the fact that they use different sound equipment and tones to produce the frequencies that are being tested. She also said that in a sound booth, the environment is controlled which gives a better idea of how well someone can hear and indicated that the sound quality/volume level of a computer speaker is much different from a speaker used in a sound booth.
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Lol! I remember asking a deaf woman "howcome I can hear all but the last 2 keys of the piano; you can only hear all but the 6 last keys of the piano yet YOU can speak on the phone and I can't speak on the phone?" during my HA days. She had no answer for me.
 
deafdude,

This test wouldn't be accurate in my case since I have 6 high frequency electrodes turned off on each CI.
 
deafskeptic said:
Lol! I remember asking a deaf woman "howcome I can hear all but the last 2 keys of the piano; you can only hear all but the 6 last keys of the piano yet YOU can speak on the phone and I can't speak on the phone?" during my HA days. She had no answer for me.
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:laugh2:

Your post is an excellent example of why online hearing tests do nothing to show how well a person hears.
 
deafdude,

I just took the test and found that I can hear every note on the piano. Pretty interesting considering the fact that I have 6 high frequency electrodes turned off on each CI yet when I'm tested in the booth, I have NR at 8K with my left CI and 70 dB at 8K with my right.
 
By the way, I know deafdude mentioned this test as a way of identifying cochlear dead zones.

However, I decided to take it in order to see how many high frequencies I could hear.

Apparently, I'm able to hear all of them without a problem despite the high frequency electrodes that were turned off.

My audi was right. The deactivated electrodes were allocated to other electrodes thereby allowing me to still hear high frequencies.
 
deafskeptic said:
Lol! I remember asking a deaf woman "howcome I can hear all but the last 2 keys of the piano; you can only hear all but the 6 last keys of the piano yet YOU can speak on the phone and I can't speak on the phone?" during my HA days. She had no answer for me.
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She probably has way better low frequency hearing and probably has more powerful HAs than you. I could never hear enough to use the phone but at this point it doesn't matter anymore with the internet.

Hear Again said:
deafdude,

I just took the test and found that I can hear every note on the piano. Pretty interesting considering the fact that I have 6 high frequency electrodes turned off on each CI yet when I'm tested in the booth, I have NR at 8K with my left CI and 70 dB at 8K with my right.
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The piano goes to a little above 4000Hz. Were you able to tell the difference between 4000Hz and a few keys below that? I am also curious how many different tones you were able to detect. You have 10 electrodes left so does this mean you hear 10 different tones and the ones in between sound the same?

Bottesini said:
Yes. I thought he said it had to be a desk top.
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You can give it a try but the laptop has a tiny, weak speaker so youll want to retest on a desktop with a normal size speaker that's much louder. You might hear only to 1108Hz on the notebook(just giving an example) but hear to 1760Hz on the desktop.

Hear Again said:
By the way, I know deafdude mentioned this test as a way of identifying cochlear dead zones.

However, I decided to take it in order to see how many high frequencies I could hear.

Apparently, I'm able to hear all of them without a problem despite the high frequency electrodes that were turned off.

My audi was right. The deactivated electrodes were allocated to other electrodes thereby allowing me to still hear high frequencies.
Click to expand...

No wonder your ability to understand speech has not decreased. Can you explain more about reallociation of electrodes? I thought the electrodes were in physical locations in the cochlea with the high frequency electrodes in the base of your cochlea?
 
Dont you have 22 electrodes Hear Again but with 6 switch off? so you have 16 still on?
 
DeafLissa90 said:
Dont you have 22 electrodes Hear Again but with 6 switch off? so you have 16 still on?
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Yes. I have 16 remaining electrodes on each CI.

The 6 electrodes that were turned off were reallocated (i.e. moved) to the low and middle frequency electrodes.

I don't understand the specifics of how that works, but it's what my audi told me after I asked why I could still hear high frequencies.
 
deafdude1 said:
No wonder your ability to understand speech has not decreased. Can you explain more about reallociation of electrodes? I thought the electrodes were in physical locations in the cochlea with the high frequency electrodes in the base of your cochlea?
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From what my audi told me, the electrodes themselves stimulate certain parts of the cochlea, but you can also redirect them to other adjacent electrodes if one or more are turned off.

In other words, the electrodes that have been turned off (in my case, 6 high frequency electrodes) are programmed to stimulate the low and middle frequency electrodes. This means that instead of the low and middle frequency electrodes only stimulating these frequencies, they also stimulate the areas of the cochlea that produce high frequencies. If I remember correctly, this is called "pairing."

My audi also said I was lucky everything worked out as well as it did in the end because I could have ended up with worse hearing/speech discrimination and/or muddied/distorted sound.

Fortunately for me, the opposite was true. Everything I hear (speech, environmental sounds, music) is as clear as a bell and exactly as I remember before I started wearing hearing aids.

I don't know if what I've written makes any sense, but it's the way I understand it according to what my audi told me. :giggle:
 
DeafLissa90 said:
Oh right, that's interesting to know!
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That's what I told my audi. :giggle:

Also keep in mind that the only frequency I can't hear with my left CI is 8K.

With my right CI I'm able to hear 8K at 70 dB. That's still hearing, so this means I'm able to hear high frequencies. I just don't hear them at 20-30 dB like most other CI users.
 
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